Be careful about pushing faculty out

There have been two recent "pretendian" cases in which faculty have resigned in response to calls for them to do so after making false claims of Native American heritage, one at Berkeley and one at Riverside. From the Mercury-News:

UC Berkeley students and Native American scholars have renewed calls for the resignation of anthropologist Elizabeth Hoover, who became the focus of concerns about the school’s academic integrity and respect for authentic Native American identity when she publicly admitted in May that she’s “a White person who incorrectly identified as Native my whole life.” The calls for Hoover to leave UC Berkeley, or for the campus to take action, began anew this month with the announced retirement of Andrea Smith, a controversial UC Riverside ethnic studies professor who faced accusations for at least 15 years that she helped build her career and scholarship around false claims of being Cherokee...

Full story at https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/08/31/uc-berkeley-scholar-faces-renewed-calls-to-resign-over-false-native-american-identity-claims/.

To the extent that such resignations are totally voluntary - not pushed by the powers-that-be on the campuses involved - there isn't more to be said. Anyone is free to resign. But the fact that these cases are treated as scandals that need to be dealt with suggests something other than totally voluntary actions are involved. Note that under Prop 209, decisions over personnel matters must not be made on the basis of race. UC officials pushed to get voters to repeal Prop 209 not long ago - and failed. Thus, Prop 209 remains in effect. So, if resignations are or were forced over the false claims, the inference could be that someone in authority thinks you can't be an expert in Native American matters, and shouldn't be hired to do research in that field, without actually being Native American. Of course, there are UC scholars - including UCLA's Carole Goldberg - who are not Native American but do conduct research in the field.

See, for example:

https://archive.org/details/ucla-emeriti-retirees-afternoon-program-goldberg-on-the-tongva-april-2021.

Tread carefully before pushing someone out would be the Labor Day advice of yours truly to campus administrators when such matters arise, not that his advice was requested.